How Civil War Shifts the Goalposts 

@@nezahuatez I mean the trailers I saw seemed to highlight California and Texas forming an alliance for some reason and succeeding? Turned me off and a lot of other military people I know off too. It just doesn't make sense. But pew pew, explosion! Lincoln Memorial getting destroyed! Thats like all you need for many people cuz people are mindless. So ofc it made a ton of money. EDIT: Eh it actually hasn't made that much money. Its been out 10 days, two whole weekends now, and its only made like 45 million bucks. While thats more money than I've ever seen that doesn't seem to be great for a movie. It was apparently made on a pretty light budget of $50 million according to Wikipedia but I'm not sure that factors in marketing. Maybe it'll make a profit in the long run but thats a bit of a rough opening ngl. It has positive reviews on Wikipedia though? Given that it looks like absolute shit I'm surprised but then again movie critics are not in touch with reality so I guess I shouldn't be

Not if it gets people to watch the movie. Does it matter if they find the movie boring if they bought a ticket anyways?

I though Ex Machina was boring as hell but really enjoyed Annihilation and its themes. Good video btw!

@@yucol5661 It does, after opening night, word of mouth gets around... a bait and switch is a bad marketing ploy, unless what you switch to is better than what was expected and no one is saying that of Civil War. Almost everyone lauds Kirsten Dunst and other actors and... says it was a shame they were wasted in a movie that didn't really say much.

The real mistake is making a movie about a major political situation currently impacting the lives of millions that doesn't actually want to say anything about that situation It's kinda like all those movies/shows using serious topics like racism as an aesthetic to feel like they're making a statement while really they're just exploiting it to make some money

Das psychology pseudoscience

This doesn't seem to be at odds with Civil War's portrayal of war photography

Annihilation is such a brilliant movie. Such finely distilled drops of human horror set in a sea of gorgeous, nearly indecipherable natural beauty. Just a perfect movie to me, the whole thing really sings.

I think the lack of character development is a carryover from the book. They didn't have names or backstories in the book. They were encouraged not to get close or even use names. They were only addressed by their job titles on the expedition (the biologist, the psychologist, the linguist, etc.).

@@danilynn9904 Yeah, you are probably right. I had read that the characters in the books all were just referred to by their job. I still have all 3 books sitting on my shelf. Still unread after several years.

@@Miskatonic1927 They’re quite good but very different. I actually preferred the movie. (Don’t tell anyone.)

Ireland had a Civil War, it does not influence politics anymore. Britain had a Civil War, guess what unless you mean that Royalism is still in the dumps then no it does not influence politics and America is the same. That War does not influence politics.

Only 20% of the current US population is descended from the people who fought in the Civil War.

I agree a lot with this statement

A lot of defenders of this movie make the argument that it’s about civil war in general, and how horrendous it could get. After all, Garland said his idea was that it could happen anywhere (as opposed to making it about America specifically), even in a western democracy. So let’s give this the benefit of the doubt. If Garland makes a warning about the consequences of war, but without exploring the context or the causes, it seems awful lot like a warning about repercussions of crime, with no thought given to why crime, despite all the repressions, persists. Crime is, but why crime is or how crime is, escapes from the picture. Likewise, wars are, but why wars are or how, we not only don’t know just based on this movie, we weren't supposed to even guess. Now, we know what happens socially when crime movies merely depict crime, with all the details but none of the explorations (hints: the Dirty Harrys and the Death Wishes). Now, what will happen when wars were portrayed in a way that we’re not supposed to think about their causes, but all about their consequences? Firstly, I don't see "avoiding the political subject" as much of a virtue as apparently a lot of normie Americans do, a lot of whom are people I know and seem to be convinced that politics is not at all a fundamental subject in their lives and shouldn't be anyone's (so goes a lot of intentional distancing away from, distrust, and even hostility towards, people who do take politics very seriously). To a lot of these people who are more politically minded, they have their reason to suspect the merits of this film, none of which Garland's defenders really address (they're more like accusations, because in their eyes being "political" is something worth being put on trial for). Military theorist Clausewitz didn't say "War is nothing but politics by other means" for no reason or justification. Wars are hellish. Of course, but to say something about wars, maybe a warning against it, without much political contextualization, and thus divorcing warfare from politics entirely (and I mean politics in a very general sense, one that even encompasses private family matters, as opposed to just "lib" vs "con" or "gop" vs "dem"), it would be comparable to thinking that one could call off violent conflicts just by showing people with horrendous images of these wars. Anyone with any knowledge of history knows that that's a very idealized picture of pacifism, one that only a westerner living with peacetime privileges could have. Try stop the conflicts between Israel and Palestine just by showing the Israelis and the Palestinians pictures of atrocities that they had been living with for decades, the very pictures they had already been all too familiar with. Put it this way: let's say that in a war, if one side's perception of the other side is that the latter are the ones who are bad faith and prefer violence, then the former will think that they have no choice but also to resort to violence. Now, in what way does showing the horrendous nature of war will have on the prospect of bringing peace to both sides, when they each think that they're the ones committed to peace but that the other side was engaging in deceit and violence in the first place? Or let's say that it's the Algerian war of liberation against the French colonizers. In such a situation, what should be the priority if bloodshed is to be avoided as much as possible? If one can, would it be prudent to stop that conflict, even if it means that the underlying conflict between the colonizers and the colonized isn't resolved? Yes, war is as much of a problem as violent crime, if not more so. But like violent crimes, is it really sufficient to show how inhuman and gruesome these crimes are in order to prevent them? In the same vein, can wars be prevented without addressing the conflicts of interests and ideas that lie beneath the hostility? Not to say documenting war crimes isn't important. But no one with knowledge of wars could say with a straight face that that's all we need. In a NYT interview, Alex Garland complains that we've made left vs. right into a moral issue, which somehow he thinks it shouldn't be. To him, if one taxation policy differs from another, it is only in its practicality. It doesn't strike me as surprising that he would contrive a fictional alliance between California and Texas, which isn't an unimaginable idea if we're given some justifications, but he did so to make the point that what we really should be preventing is clownish villains like the President in this film, whose crimes are beyond leftism vs rightism. Could there be a reason why the film didn't tell us the motivations for the President to order airstrikes on civilians, disband FBI, and do other bad things? Framing defines the morals of a story. Generally speaking, when a character does things that are meant to be interpreted as "bad", and when the story doesn't clarify why that character did such atrocious things, we have ourselves a one-dimensional villain. By design, such a contrivance forces the readers or viewers to identify with forces opposing that villain. And, again without justification, the left and the right join forces against the villain President, as if the left wouldn't see him as a "fascist" ally with the right, or the right wouldn't a "big-government" "commie" ally with the left. Is Garland trying to say that the solution to polarization is by hoping such a farcical evil figure to emerge that it only makes sense for both the left and the right to oppose? Garland also made a point about blind animosity. But like so many other themes of this film, it's never so much explored as it is merely presented. What are the roots of this blind hatred? We can conjecture that, on the battlefield, it's survival needs preceding moral concerns. But if that's true, we never got a sense of the dire material conditions to know for ourselves, that these lives on the front lines really don't have any other choice. And what about Jesse Plemons? Why does he kill even non-military people? (Remember that his questions about "what kind of Americans?" weren't raised when he was ready to execute Jessie, until Lee steps in) It's a terrifying situation that does indeed happen in real life, but still: what do they gain by such brutality? It's not sufficient to presume that wars drive people to insanity, or close to it, as psychological questions involving such insanity are just as valid as political questions as anything else (why the Holocaust, or the Cultural Revolution, or the Reign of Terror?). Other themes were merely presented, but not explored, such as Lee's self-doubts about the moral utility of total spectatorship as required by her profession (see the review I wrote). But it leaves the audience so little to think about, that even some themes escape their experience entirely (many people didn't even notice Lee's concerns as a major theme that ties into the ending). The film unequivocally endorses an "older" kind of journalism that apparently stresses "objectivity" and "impartiality". If you've ever read any media analyses like Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, you know that such "objectivity" or "impartiality" are but fiction. But with that, Garland takes a step even further than this "older" journalism. The film made many references to people who pretend as if the civil war isn't their business, or simply not an ongoing fact. It appears as if these journalist characters are both purer than both the politically militant and the politically ignorant by being politically "factual". But what is so "factual" about staying uninformed of the subjective intentions, explicitly stated or psychologically understated, involved in the bloodshed they witness? The hesitation to “take sides” doesn’t excuse the underdevelopment of the political conceit. Filmmakers like Sidney Lumet and Sergio Leone have explored politics with their own humanisms, but they also knew how to transcend beyond it, enlarge and entrench their point into about the human condition, that in the end the politics seem like an afterthought. They make their works larger than politics by embracing it, making the whole larger, and deeper, than the sum of its parts. But Garland thinks he could do that by avoiding it.

I feel like this is an argument that only an American can make. There's such a long history of countries overthrowing their governments or breaking out into civil wars to combat injustices. Wars, especially civil wars, happen for a reason. To ignore the "why" just so you can say "look, war is scary!" is so basic and surface level. Yes, war is hell. We get a "war is hell" movie every 3 years it seems. That's why this movie falls kind of flat in many people's eyes. Alex Garland is saying nothing new and pretending he's just enlightened us. The plot of this movie could happen during any war in history, so why is it even called Civil War if the civil war in the movie isn't even all that important?

@@underscore_5450You are correct that this is an American centric film. The emphasis on civil war being something unique is intentional because American culture has a unique relationship with civil war. More so than any democratic nation in the western world. War is bad and can happen anywhere is not the point. The point is that a modern American civil war would look unprecedented, because of those values. Whether those values would hold in the situation is the question the movie explores

@@cheekylix classic leftist wall of text

Replying to Truffaut's assertion that it's impossible to make an anti-war movie because every movie romanticizes what it depicts, Kubrick said “That’s clever because you can’t fault it, but I’m not sure what it means. There are obviously elements in a war film that involve visual spectacle, courage, loyalty, affection, self-sacrifice, and adventure, and these things tend to complicate any anti-war message." Also, you fault Garland for using ironic music (particularly De La Soul's Say No Go [Garland used that song in that particular sequence to tarnish any romance that could possibly be interpreted]) but Kubrick wasn't exactly avoiding irony himself when he used The Mickey Mouse Club Song at the end of Full Metal Jacket.

That Breaker’s Roar needle drop was fantastic.

@@zachcameron1117 I dont remember al of full metal jacket, havent watched it in years, but weren't the soldiers singing it?

@@kaydenjones3183 Yes.

Nerrrrd

Well said. Feels like there was a predetermined bias that ignores the acknowledged efficacy haha. I think "how much a film sticks with me" is trumping (no pun intended) how much I feel I enjoy the movie of late

Just read your article. I quite enjoyed it and resonate with much of what you say! Having said that, there are a couple of things I'd like to say in response. First, while I of course understand the comparisons to January 6th actors while looking at the final photo, I think leaning too hard on a 'side' executing the president would risk missing the point-- that our relationship with objectivity is what leads us to this level of desensitization. This of course, (or maybe not "of course", but it seems obviously inevitable to me), is a plight that afflicts both red and blue. Anyway, I don't think your article indulges in that comparison too much, but I just wanted to bring it up in case you had any interesting thoughts in response. The second, and more important part of my response is this: 2/3 of the way through your article you create a dichotomy between 'objective altruism' and 'art' or 'artistry'. I totally see why you'd do this, and why that would be one takeaway from the film/interpretation of authorial intent. However, I personally see that as a tragically misguided framing of art. This could be quite a lengthy passage I'm about to write lol. We'll see!! Anyway, so Jessie uses a camera/film that is not the most "accessible" (can you tell I know nothing about photography?), but the resulting aesthetic of the photos can yield a more compelling artistic piece. This is the claim. And perhaps it's true, like I said I know nothing about photography. And we could maybe extrapolate from this that the 'more objective' alternative would have been to use a digital camera (is that right? Is that the superior alternative? Help!). This of course makes sense to me, as digital in many ways implies a sort of input/output, on/off, binary framework for.... well, everything! A further implication here is that the more 'accessible' the image, the more informative the image (standard lowest common denominator logic, a logic that also applies to the film, music, and television industries), and the more informative, the more helpful the image is. The other side of this is of course the implication that it's the 'get it for the 'gram' (lol I already forgot the phrase... not the most social media savvy person over here!) approach to information that is soul-rending, desensitizing, inaccessible, harmful. I think this positioning is *completely* missing out on a third option, and not recognizing that the presented options are two sides of the same coin known as objectivity. Our reliance upon image, as you poignantly express, has rendered us desensitized, 'soul diminished', etc. But what if I said that instagram, facebook, etc. operate on the same set of.... metaphysical assumptions about what it means to be human, to be 'right', to be 'good' as objective news/journalism does? Both options, necessarily, decontextualize the subjects (admittedly one of them nominally expresses that that is literally it's goal, while the other is just in denial that that is it's goal. Nevertheless, they both do it). Somehow, we are supposed to gather that this is a good, admirable thing in one context, but a hypocritical, inauthentic, shallow thing in another? I contend that it's inauthentic, shallow, and hypocritical in both contexts! We assume that we need access to objective information to remain informed about the goings on of the world. To this I have two points. First, I've yet to read an 'objective' piece of news. I've yet to see an 'objective' image, in the sense that I'm being exposed to a metaphysically real, True state of affairs. Of course all media we consume is biased. Some are just in denial of this. The second point is that I think we appreciate things most when we relate the most. One could argue this necessitates accessibility as a standard for communication, but I think that's putting the cart before the horse. Things are accessible when expressed and received with openness and vulnerability. This doesn't mean every human will be able to understand or be moved by such expressions (but of course that's an impossible standard to meet with 'objective' portrayals as well!!!). It simply means that we need relatability. By relatability I don't mean accessibility, I mean *relationship*. And relationship requires context, bias, whatever word you want to use!!! It is through relation that information compounds. Contemporary society seems to be operating as if the opposite is true. I see this as the desperate, urgent shift resulting from an inability to otherwise function morally within a globalized capitalistic planet. Science, data, facts, economics, have to replace all other foundations for ethical living. Anyway anyway anyway, I feel I could go on and on there but I hope I've gotten my point across (not to be confused with convincing you I'm right... I just think you/the reader have enough here to understand where I'm coming from!!) In short, the point that I see this film making is perhaps not an indictment of photojournalism, but of objectivity itself. I have no clue if Garland would articulate it that way when asked, but I genuinely believe he's on that wavelength. And that's why I find this film so compelling (and Taylor's deference to objectivity is why he can only see this film as being too safe/cheap in its apoliticality, rather than MORE compelling through it's resistance of the urge to dive deep into the factions or material conditions that result in a civil war). What are you thoughts on this? I have a feeling you were already partially in alignment with my perspective but aren't used to people indicting objectivity itself. Does that bridge any gaps for you or do you feel you already generally grasped what the film was going for?

If his point was to make the journalists are apolitical makes his movie shockingly stupid. We knew from how journalist report the are bias whether we agree or not with them is a different story. And if you think about often time how unbiased reporting is framed it is so stupid. Take reporting in a war zone unbiased reporting would be "this side said the other side is commiting war crimes and the other side said no, they are not and than claim their enemy is the real one committing war crimea. Cut to report shrugging their shoulders and saying you decided you is lying.

Not to mention like in Garland's film but not Garland in interviews, is kind of playing with how journalism can kind of be exploitative with how it captures graphic images for it to be consumed by the public. I think this has become true when discussing how we have become increasingly desensitized to violence watching police shootings and killings in body cam footage along with all the horror coming out of Gaza. There's something there I think that could've been cool if it were fleshed out more between the dynamics between Walter Cronkite style journalism in Stephen McKinley Henderson's character and the more jaded VICE news gen x style journalism of Wagner Moura/Kirsten Dunst to the independent journalist Cailee Spaeny. But Garland's set piece road trip movie doesn't even have meaningful discussions or tensions between these characters. Even with Dunst line "it's a warning, don't do this" like rings sooo hollow bc WHAT DO YOU MEAN DON'T DO THIS? Does Garland think these large historical events happen because our own shere will power? The movie in the end ACTUALLY does the thing it's criticizing by having these violent images of lynchings and mass graves and burning bodies be shown to the audience out of context to anything bigger and just desensitizes us to the "horror" he's trying to depict. Garland to violent imagery that invoked memories of the holocaust and the Bosnian genocide in this movie is what Sam Levinson is to objectifying women in his works. Recreation does not equal critique and you basically just made a movie in which you made your audience unwilling participants in a process you're supposedly attempting to commentate or criticize in?

@@xrxwearebetterthancapitalism I think provided zero context to the civil war was probably part of the point haha. Exposing our own bias- mine being that my main takeaway was "pain=bad", so both sides bad. You're right, exploring the dynamics between reporting style would be interesting, but so would be introducing a bunch of genetically modified T-REX Ferrari monsters to Civil War.

do you think that at its core, journalism COULD be more scientific in sharing news without bias?

One of the best series I've ever seen, Generation Kill, is based on war journalism and what it can teach us It absolutely isn't apolitical, or purely voyeuristic or sadistic Idk wtf he meant with this movie Journalism is an important aspect of life specially on controversial topics like war

No. The movie fails in its own premise. It isn't for the audience to assume the greatness of what's supposedly a great film. By definition, they're supposed to watch movies with their subjective interpretations. It's the movie's job of directing their interpretations that it sees fits. A lot of defenders of this movie make the argument that it’s about civil war in general, and how horrendous it could get. After all, Garland said his idea was that it could happen anywhere (as opposed to making it about America specifically), even in a western democracy. So let’s give this the benefit of the doubt. If Garland makes a warning about the consequences of war, but without exploring the context or the causes, it seems awful lot like a warning about repercussions of crime, with no thought given to why crime, despite all the repressions, persists. Crime is, but why crime is or how crime is, escapes from the picture. Likewise, wars are, but why wars are or how, we not only don’t know just based on this movie, we weren't supposed to even guess. Now, we know what happens socially when crime movies merely depict crime, with all the details but none of the explorations (hints: the Dirty Harrys and the Death Wishes). Now, what will happen when wars were portrayed in a way that we’re not supposed to think about their causes, but all about their consequences? Firstly, I don't see "avoiding the political subject" as much of a virtue as apparently a lot of normie Americans do, a lot of whom are people I know and seem to be convinced that politics is not at all a fundamental subject in their lives and shouldn't be anyone's (so goes a lot of intentional distancing away from, distrust, and even hostility towards, people who do take politics very seriously). To a lot of these people who are more politically minded, they have their reason to suspect the merits of this film, none of which Garland's defenders really address (they're more like accusations, because in their eyes being "political" is something worth being put on trial for). Military theorist Clausewitz didn't say "War is nothing but politics by other means" for no reason or justification. Wars are hellish. Of course, but to say something about wars, maybe a warning against it, without much political contextualization, and thus divorcing warfare from politics entirely (and I mean politics in a very general sense, one that even encompasses private family matters, as opposed to just "lib" vs "con" or "gop" vs "dem"), it would be comparable to thinking that one could call off violent conflicts just by showing people with horrendous images of these wars. Anyone with any knowledge of history knows that that's a very idealized picture of pacifism, one that only a westerner living with peacetime privileges could have. Try stop the conflicts between Israel and Palestine just by showing the Israelis and the Palestinians pictures of atrocities that they had been living with for decades, the very pictures they had already been all too familiar with. Put it this way: let's say that in a war, if one side's perception of the other side is that the latter are the ones who are bad faith and prefer violence, then the former will think that they have no choice but also to resort to violence. Now, in what way does showing the horrendous nature of war will have on the prospect of bringing peace to both sides, when they each think that they're the ones committed to peace but that the other side was engaging in deceit and violence in the first place? Or let's say that it's the Algerian war of liberation against the French colonizers. In such a situation, what should be the priority if bloodshed is to be avoided as much as possible? If one can, would it be prudent to stop that conflict, even if it means that the underlying conflict between the colonizers and the colonized isn't resolved? Yes, war is as much of a problem as violent crime, if not more so. But like violent crimes, is it really sufficient to show how inhuman and gruesome these crimes are in order to prevent them? In the same vein, can wars be prevented without addressing the conflicts of interests and ideas that lie beneath the hostility? Not to say documenting war crimes isn't important. But no one with knowledge of wars could say with a straight face that that's all we need. In a NYT interview, Alex Garland complains that we've made left vs. right into a moral issue, which somehow he thinks it shouldn't be. To him, if one taxation policy differs from another, it is only in its practicality. It doesn't strike me as surprising that he would contrive a fictional alliance between California and Texas, which isn't an unimaginable idea if we're given some justifications, but he did so to make the point that what we really should be preventing is clownish villains like the President in this film, whose crimes are beyond leftism vs rightism. Could there be a reason why the film didn't tell us the motivations for the President to order airstrikes on civilians, disband FBI, and do other bad things? Framing defines the morals of a story. Generally speaking, when a character does things that are meant to be interpreted as "bad", and when the story doesn't clarify why that character did such atrocious things, we have ourselves a one-dimensional villain. By design, such a contrivance forces the readers or viewers to identify with forces opposing that villain. And, again without justification, the left and the right join forces against the villain President, as if the left wouldn't see him as a "fascist" ally with the right, or the right wouldn't a "big-government" "commie" ally with the left. Is Garland trying to say that the solution to polarization is by hoping such a farcical evil figure to emerge that it only makes sense for both the left and the right to oppose? Garland also made a point about blind animosity. But like so many other themes of this film, it's never so much explored as it is merely presented. What are the roots of this blind hatred? We can conjecture that, on the battlefield, it's survival needs preceding moral concerns. But if that's true, we never got a sense of the dire material conditions to know for ourselves, that these lives on the front lines really don't have any other choice. And what about Jesse Plemons? Why does he kill even non-military people? (Remember that his questions about "what kind of Americans?" weren't raised when he was ready to execute Jessie, until Lee steps in) It's a terrifying situation that does indeed happen in real life, but still: what do they gain by such brutality? It's not sufficient to presume that wars drive people to insanity, or close to it, as psychological questions involving such insanity are just as valid as political questions as anything else (why the Holocaust, or the Cultural Revolution, or the Reign of Terror?). Other themes were merely presented, but not explored, such as Lee's self-doubts about the moral utility of total spectatorship as required by her profession (see the review I wrote). But it leaves the audience so little to think about, that even some themes escape their experience entirely (many people didn't even notice Lee's concerns as a major theme that ties into the ending). The film unequivocally endorses an "older" kind of journalism that apparently stresses "objectivity" and "impartiality". If you've ever read any media analyses like Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, you know that such "objectivity" or "impartiality" are but fiction. But with that, Garland takes a step even further than this "older" journalism. The film made many references to people who pretend as if the civil war isn't their business, or simply not an ongoing fact. It appears as if these journalist characters are both purer than both the politically militant and the politically ignorant by being politically "factual". But what is so "factual" about staying uninformed of the subjective intentions, explicitly stated or psychologically understated, involved in the bloodshed they witness? And I don't see as many questions asked by the defenders of this movie, who are content on simple messages like "war bad" and "prevent war", as by the critics. The hesitation to “take sides” doesn’t excuse the underdevelopment of the political conceit. Filmmakers like Sidney Lumet and Sergio Leone have explored politics with their own humanisms, but they also knew how to transcend beyond it, enlarge and entrench their point into about the human condition, that in the end the politics seem like an afterthought. They make their works larger than politics by embracing it, making the whole larger, and deeper, than the sum of its parts. But Garland thinks he could do that by avoiding it.

@@cheekylix cool

@@cheekylixYou said a whole lot of nothing. Would you have preferred if a black screen popped up at the beginning that said “Republicans and Donald Trump are freaking bad”

@@guyfieri791 Your self-reflection is very on point

@@cheekylix Your entire essay basically boils down to “it doesn’t have contemporary politics explicitly inserted into it therefore it’s bad”

Violent revolution is the very reason why the US even exists in the first place. Yes war is hell, but to pretend that war has never resulted in anything good is to ignore virtually every civil war and revolution that has ever occurred in history. War has been the primary tool by which the oppressed can rise up against their oppressors and it necessitate violence against the oppressors. The UK would never agree to just let a colony become independent. All over the world there have been violent uprisings against Britain and other colonizers that have resulted in liberation for oppressed populations. To title the movie "Civil War", set it in the US, and then to not comment on why people would rise up against eachother and the government is just bad writing.

War does make politics melt away for the individual soldier which the film shows. But like you say, the ideology of whatever side wins a conflict is incredibly important and consequential but the film has little interest in that

⁠@@underscore_5450​​⁠You lost me at “to pretend that war has never resulted in anything good” Who is saying that? Also you acknowledge that America has a special relationship with the concept of a civil war, but you are also trying to compare it to other examples. Is there any country like America in the world? I don’t think it’s fair to pull in any other examples. They don’t stack up. It’s not American exceptionalism to realize how unique the country is and how every war fought on its borders has dramatically shifted the values and left an impact on its culture. The movie is about that impact on the culture

​@@underscore_5450 The French Revolution is a good example of a revolution going terribly wrong

Wich would make this movie just another one in the pile with nothing more important, new or relevant to say War bad yes but why ? What would lead to war ? What could we do about war ? How does war would affect society ? But I doesn't engage in any topic because it's completely apolitical, doesn't engage with the setting and just show us images of extreme violence

Yeah I like how you put it “other films…. Treat ideology as part of human nature, rather than a bug to be patched out”. I guess all I’m saying is that I agree with you that that is a difference between this film and the other war films you cite, and I think that makes this film MORE insightful rather than a film which bypasses real insight through its lack of context. Ideology as we understand the phenomenon today anyway, does indeed defer to some standard of objectivity. Now I know what you’re thinking. What an obviously inaccurate claim. Ideology is our freakin SEPARATION from objectivity, you might say. It’s our main way of revealing our biases, our lack of objectivity, you might say. But really in our desperate efforts to convince people we’re right we justify our violence toward them, our dehumanization of them, or distance from them through some sort of rationalization. Some attempt to merge our personal ideology with Truth, be this macroeconomics, a creator god, or modern science. The point of this film as far as I’ve interpreted is that those leaps ARE the problem. They are what takes us away from the real, from nature. So in this sense, yes, ideology is a bug, not a feature. I like the word tumor here once again. And to be clear I’m not saying that relativism is the alternative. I think relativism is the ‘rational’ implication when objectivity is rejected, and is inevitably just another ideology deferring to some foundation of objectivity. Anyway, we’ve reached the point where I don’t think we’re going to get answers from the film about where to turn to. But I do see it as a film earnestly portraying the problem. Perhaps the main reason this doesn’t satisfy people is that it doesn’t show us the solution, so it makes the presidents final line seem like we got the problem wrong in our experience watching the film up to that point. But I think that’s on the viewer needing some sort of solace when a rug has been pulled out from under them. I don’t necessarily think that renders the movie safe or cheap. Given the world is was operating within I’d say it would need an extra hour or so to properly expose us to an alternative. However, I think we get little snippets throughout the film. Snippets of vulnerability between humans. Of nature crying out to us that it’s still here and we can return at any time (when we linger on shots in the woods while they’re driving, hearing birds and insects in a wash of green and brown, when we see dunsts character looking through the flowers when lying on the ground (we could choose to see this as a cynical photographers perspective of a good shot, but I think the ambiguity/back and forth there is precisely the struggle we’re witnessing her character go through). It’s already there if we’re receptive of the film. So let’s go try on dresses together or hop from one car to another together or lay in the grass and wildflowers together, despite it all. How about it?

Nooooooo why must we conclude from this that it’s an endless cycle?!?!?!?! Again, the lack of an unambiguously expressed alternative is not the same as resigning oneself to a cycle of tragedy. Rather than seeing the struggle of these characters as eternal I see it as escapable, even if that escape isn’t forever.

I think the “back and forth and back and forth” of this movie reflects the aforementioned struggle for all of our characters to remain human. The “two sides of the same coin” Jesse characterization fits, I think. But it’s particularly interesting when we see how the characters respond to it in different ways, and how those responses reveal both how far gone they all are but also how they all still have the ability to return to innocence. Once again, it just seems like you have an unwillingness to receive what I perceive to be authorial intent. Maybe this comes down to exposure to his other work or lack thereof, but given your- at least up to this point- lack of acknowledgment of these moments of humanity beyond throwing one of them away as tonal inconsistency, I’m more inclined to believe there’s just something in the way of you giving the humanity on display the time of day

Honestly if he never wanted to make the movie deeper, agreed, just make it ambiguous as it seems like everything else is, and then create this world as if we would have lore and all that

I think that the Texas Cali alliance is important to try and muddy the waters to prevent audiences latching onto their side in a fight between blue vs red

this guy is a bad reviewer, don't be surprised he didn't get annihilation

Least pretentious Annihilation fan.

Alex Garland is a very talented writer and filmmaker who also happens to be extremely dumb. Which is far more common than people like to think.

Oh God no...

So you've copied and pasted a quote of his, but I would like to hear why YOU dislike this quote rather than me assuming why you dislike it so strongly. Hopefully you can comment without just simply saying "his quote is self explanatory". Thanks.

​@@wellthissucks112 it's pretty self evidently stupid. How to run a society is something we should take seriously. He's talking as if it's just a difference of opinion when the decisions we make as a society are much, much more grave than that. If he views politics as separate from morality, not only is he dumb, he's privelege d in a way that blinds him to political realities that shape our world. He is so utterly bereft of political literacy

That is your own damn fault if that innocuous quote bothered you so much. I really doubt Garland gives a shit that you are seething 🤷‍♀️

you get what you give with this movie, if you have expectations that aren’t met, that’s probably why people feel the way that they feel.

Agreed. It sounds like this movie was pinned before viewing. Expecting a movie to fit an interpersonal predetermined mould that requires your predisposition of its director AND political views/preference for source material AND intent seems like a pretty wild oversight for critique. I think the stories focus on the characters journey within the narrative held more weight than any presumed intention of Garlands's assumed desire of statement/discourse.

This movie would be a million times better if it was set in a real war, past or present, with American involvement or not. Real wars are nuanced, neither side is 100% right, and as a war journalist you have to deal with moral dilemmas and threats of violence all the time - basically everything Alex Garland wanted to say with this movie would be more impactful if it was set in a war that has some background, story, and stakes. The made up and poorly explained war he used gave me no reason to care about anything happening on screen.

As a journalist, this movie does a shallow, if not absolutely empty, exploration of wartime journalism. These characters are not real people, they are mouthpieces for Garland to espouse ambivalent philosophies. The film doesn't even understand how it wants to feel about death. It's tonally chaotic. A much better recent depiction of wartime journalism is A Private War. Garland used a fictionalized American civil war as strictly a marketing tool which is cheap and lazy filmmaking.

​@@pepesilvia3573 Preach

Except... when you tell us that California and Texas (two states that couldn't be on more opposite sides politically)I have teamed up, and somehow they are capable of conquering their way all the way to DC against the US armed forces, that will obviously present confusion. If he wanted to play it straightforward with the red state/blue state very Trumpian lines, then that would be self-explanatory. Instead he created a convoluted world and didn't give us any indication what either side is fighting for or how it functions. I think the "so many Americans seem not to know the reasons for the war" is not achievement of intent, but an indictment of the frustratingly obfuscated filmmaking

That’s just a long winded excuse for lack of world building

It's not state backed media. It's corporation backed media. The problem is big money interests control the media narrative and pushing only what they want people to see.

You cooked him dude​@@romankotas448

I think I get what you're saying, but I think your conclusions miss the mark a little bit. Sure there's certainly obfuscation on the part of politicians to keep people divided so they keep thinking they are under threat by the opposition, but people do actually have beliefs. Israel and Palestine aren't a war because of propaganda and politcal meddling, there's a LONG history of violence and unfair treatment from Israel. In war morals don't suddenly disappear and get muddied, if anything they do they opposite. They collapse into singular ideas that the entire cause rallies around. Patriotism, religious beliefs, revenge, ect. I find it ridiculous that Civil War has FIVE WHOLE FACTIONS and not single one has any discernable cause they've rallied around. People don't start wars for no reason and people especially don't risk their lives rising up against their own government for no reason either. State backed propaganda and division is bad, but it would never cause a civil war on purpose. Politicans want us to still rally under the US flag, otherwise they don't have any power.

Who's actually saying this? I'm curious

​@@asmodeusguys4472 Everyone???

for example, 20 days in mariupol is literally a documentary about couple of journalists documenting the horrific things happening in ukraine. a country fighting for it's independence. literally just filming dead mangled bodies and other terrible shit. and yeah it asks a bunch of the same questions as this movie regarding war journalism and it won an oscar. i mean if these types of wars and things can happen in other countries why are there so many people denouncing civil war for it's "unrealistic" approach to this kind of stuff when this is literally happening in other places in the world?

You say it’s interesting that several factions are present with varying ideologies and I agree but the film doesn’t use it at all. The only character whose ideology is on show is the dude who shoots the journalists for not being American. Everyone else is just “shoot the guys shooting us”. Which is great for the sniper scene but I’d like more to chew on for the rest. What do the Hawaiian shirt guys think or the western alliance. Having some details gives context to their actions particularly in the dc battle where multiple unarmed members of the government are executed. And that’s not an “I like X political party” thing. Make them all do heinous shit but give us some understanding as to why they do the things they do

Just a hipster saying incredibly obvious things

@@shiven513 funny, can say the same thing about garland

It will take time for it to CLICK to general public, and even frequent “movie-goers.” Great Film.

Highly doubt that a dedicated film review channel would make a video without watching the film first

So the 2nd and 3rd books are worth reading? I read Annihilation and liked it a lot but wasn’t really sure where else it needed to go knowing it was only the first volume of a trilogy.

@@nbeutler1134 I really really enjoyed the whole trilogy but I also understand why it’s a polarising read

That almost never happens. What is more likely is infighting for a couple years.

@@johnnotrealname8168 ☝️🤓

it's a fun movie to see in theaters.

@@blyndblitz Why fund shit movies? Just pirate it later

@@blyndblitz i’m just gonna see challengers instead

​@@dustycomputer1806Challengers is my Civil War

​@@blyndblitz So is Plan 9 From Outer Space. Doesn't make it good.

yeah I noticed too

Well than you wouldn't ignore the other flaws with the movie like the fact that the two just reporters are never shown taken notes and not counting the one time in the begining you never see them report into their new services. Also they most likely would never just decide on their own to make road trip to interview the president without their respective editors giving them the ok. Also the one who is along for the ride to the front line would have long since been pulled from conflict reporting due to his health. And finally this an all sides American conflict and if there is one great truth it is since Vietnam the American Military knows how to control the news media. They only report what the military wants them to report.

@@stephennootens916 That assumes the military can control them. The world is increasingly disparate so that is unlikely. Also pressure, you got embedded reporters in Iraq for example.

@@johnnotrealname8168 when it comes to American reports in conflicts which the American military is involved they are in a way control. There is a book Taliban Shuffle by Chicago newspaper report about her time in Afghanistan and you get a clear sense that the reports had a sort of base of operations in the capital. It has vary gonzo reporting and doesn't give you the nuts and bolts of the war but it does give a sense of what it is like for American reporters in combat zones. Side note also the us military as shocking as it sounds does not approve of war crimes and given both side largely behave and look like trained American soldiers the fact that they not only commit what are clearly war crime and in front of the press is bit of a bridge top far. Plus as general rule Americans don't shoot press people they are not the IDF.

@@stephennootens916 Yes because people always follow rules. I am not a rabid hater of the U.S. military, quite the opposite, but they can be cruel to their enemies.

@@johnnotrealname8168 I have no doubt that they can be cruel but they are well trained and disciplined to go as far as the movie shows them going unless there massive break down.

"There is no provable objective reality" - How can we know this sentence describes reality if there's no provable objective reality?

@@filipealmeidapt As soon as you start saying "No, I KNOW what is real" you're denying innumerable other people's reality that doesn't match up with yours. Just because we THINK we understand each other when we "use the same language" doesn't mean what you and I think is actually the same or even similar when we speak and hear. In fact, if you really truly get to know someone on a deep level, you'll see this for yourself

You are absolutely right and I don't disagree with your claims in your second response. You still did not answer my first question. Believing there is an external reality outside human consciousness (or that we can be relatively certain about SOME things in the world) does NOT deny the importance of subjective experience at a personal and/or cultural level.

Then why create an whole fucking map with factions and promises of lore and deeper exploration of the world if that wasn't the point ?

@@plaguedoctorjamespainshe6009 there were no promises of lore? Literally the opposite. Listen to an interview of Garland on his intent. The map is a small Easter egg that’s seen for a second and also doesn’t give anything away.

don't worry it's 50/50 on the disappointment scale.